In electronic office systems, a document may frequently be shared or accessed by many users. A document classifications permits such a document to be shared or accessed only by users having proper credentials. When there is a single document, any document classification is based on the document and is therefore dependent on that document. Problems occur when a collection of documents are formed into a single document entity. Since document classification is dependent on individual documents, there is presently no method whereby users can access, view and manage a collection of documents as a single document entity.
One prior art document classification method utilizes a defacto classification of documents based on their business use. For example, a customer's loan folder could consist of such documents as a "loan application", "credit history", "loan insurance" and "payment history". Users requiring access to the documents in the customer's loan folder might consist of a clerk and a loan officer. A system administrator would set up allowable document labels for each user as well as the retention periods for particular users. In this example, the loan officer might need a copy of the "loan application" for up to three years after the loan is paid. Therefore, the system administrator would set up allowable document labels for the loan officer's use of the "loan application" along with a retention period set to expire three years after the loan is paid. In the same manner, a clerk working with the same "loan application" would need the document around only while the account is active. Again, the system administrator would set up allowable document labels along with a retention period based on the clerk's requirements. This document classification method allows protection of the documents based on the user or the business use of the document.
The users are permitted to assign private-use labels in the place of the allowable document labels set up by the system administrator. Therefore, a user can change the retention period or ownership expiration data of the document. However, this document classification method will not permit users to access, view, and manage the customer's loan folder as a single document entity composed of "loan application", "credit history", "loan insurance", and "payment history" documents. This results from a document classification that is dependent on individual documents within the customer's loan folder. Any attempted document combination would cause each of the individual documents to lose its identity and would limit user access to the overall document classification given the customer's loan folder.
Consequently, what is needed is a technique for classifying a collection of documents based on their relationships between each other, so that users can access, view, and manage the documents as a single entity.